This invention relates to a system for providing yardage and position information at various points on a golf course hole as a golfing aid.
The game of golf has endured through the years as a test of man's subtle coordination. Powerful men must restrain their strength in favor of timing, touch, and strategy. Variations in a golfer's swing, body alignment, grip, and tempo combine with wind, weather, trees, hills, sand and water to make golfing consistency an elusive goal.
Professional golfers know the importance of eliminating as many variables from the game as possible in order to improve their scores. They use precision weighted clubs and new balls without scars or ovality. They practice their club swing for hours striving to create a consistent or "grooved" swing. When the professionals reach a tournament course, they carefully study the tees, greens and hazards to plan their game strategy. One of the key aspects of strategy is knowing yardages from various points on the course to the green, and yardages to various hazards, such as water or sand traps. The yardage information enables the golfer to plan ball placement strategy and select the proper clubs for given distances. The luxury of inspecting and carefully planning golf strategy is not afforded the amateur golfer, even though they are just as concerned with knowing yardage information to the greens or hazards. The amateur cannot spend the time necessary to evaluate their ball positions accurately since play would become extremely slow and many courses do not have even the most rudimentary yardage references, such as the markers often used to designate a position 150 yards from the center of green.
Various mechanized approaches toward determining the yardage to various points or hazards are presently known. Examples of such systems include optical rangefinders which is trained on a target such as the pin flag and calculates the exact distance through triangulation. Other approaches using radio frequency communication technology are also known for measuring distance to a target. Although such devices would likely provide the desired range information, they violate the rules of golf since they find exact distances. In addition, such devices are "active" devices in that they require a golfer to take some special steps each time yardage information is needed which would slow down play, and would likely be viewed as unfair and awkward to other players. Moreover, such devices do not find distances to other significant course landmarks such as sand traps or water hazards, or features hidden from view.
The golf information system in accordance with the various embodiments of the present invention improves over prior art systems in that these embodiments generally provide information for the golfer as to range and position which would have the effect of speeding up play, and are passive in the sense of not requiring special attention each time information is desired. The system of the present invention, in one embodiment, includes a number of radio frequency (r.f.) identification transponders or "tags" which are buried in the ground along certain designated paths of a golf course hole or are positioned to define a two dimensional matrix across the hole surface, each of which contains a characteristic coded identification signal. A reading device, preferably mounted to a golf cart, passes over the tags and activates them causing them to transmit their coded signal. The code is then processed by the reading system to retrieve a set of information from a programmed look-up table in memory which is outputted and visually displayed to the golfer. Accordingly, as the golf cart moves about the hole, range and position information is provided at various incremental positions. Such information would include yardage information to the green and hazards, and perhaps distance from the tee. Using this information, the golfer would then estimate the true distance of his or her ball to the green or hazards by considering the cart position with respect to the ball.
This system would not violate the rules of golf since it requires a degree of golfer's skill and judgment in adjusting their club selection and strategy as compared with the designated reference points defined by the tags. It is further passive in that it does not require active participation by the golfer who merely reads the information from a digital display on the golf cart. Various types of information besides position and yardage could also be outputted by this system including advertising messages displayed at preselected times, and information regarding speed of play. Since the system would give the golfer additional information about range and positions, it would improve golf scores and thus reduce the time of play which provides commercial advantages for the golf course operator. Since the r.f. identification tags would be preferably buried in the ground, they would not in any way detract from the natural beauty of the golf course. Moreover, the tags could be positioned only along preselected golf cart paths as a means of reducing damage to the course caused by golf carts being operated in unauthorized areas since the information system would be inoperative in such areas.
The system of the present invention, in another embodiment, utilizes a plurality of transmitters, each of which is coupled to an antenna, which are buried across each of the fairways (or the golf cart paths) of a typical golf course and which transmit positional information to the golf cart, and hence to the golfer, as the cart passes thereon. This aforementioned alternative embodiment employs a transmitter having two oscillators operating at different frequencies. Each of these oscillators feed separate driver circuits which are coupled to a key modulator.
A digital signature generator is coupled to the key modulator and causes the key modulator to select one of the driver circuit outputs to an antenna. In this manner, a digital positional signature is transmitted to terms of the frequencies associated with the oscillators. The review, of this embodiment, utilizes a key demodulator which converts the received frequency signals to substantially the original output of the signature generator. A third embodiment of this invention utilizes a radio frequency link between a golf cart and a clubhouse in order to give golf course management positional information of the golf carts on the course.
Additional benefits and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art to which this invention relates from the subsequent description of the preferred embodiments and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.